What if all technology was wiped out?

Hellrazer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120638774#Comment_120638774

Eeeeek. Often wondered how anyone could live with family like that :)

I wonder myself how we ever got through our teenage years without being so "connected" to each other.

To be honest they arent that bad - Id say probably a fair bit better than their friends who are connected 24/7 - we take their devices in the evenings and they arent allowed them after lights out time at all.

When we bring the furry babies out to Donadea / Blessington the phones stay at home so we try do that once a week or more.

Its difficult being a parent to teenagers in such a connected world to be honest. Theres a very fine line there between giving them complete connected freedom and monitoring their online usage.

silliussoddius

I'm sure the crypto promoters would find a way to sell some more sh!t coins.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120639633#Comment_120639633

I don't see it.

If a solar storm killed everything, then there's hardly a car or truck in the country that would start, and hardly a week of petrol or diesel to keep things moving.

If you needed a part for a machine, how would you know who to call, how would you call them, and how would your part get delivered?

How would you equip people with the tools, land, seed potatoes, and the farming know-how to plant food?

How do you keep people fed while you're waiting six months for food to grow?

Honestly, society would get maybe a week's grace, then fall apart.

Apiarist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640002#Comment_120640002

The amount of petrol and diesel would essentially be unlimited, since cars won't be able to use the fuel. Delivered parts? No, that would be impossible. It's more like skilled mechanics who know old cars using hammers and chisels to scavenge and fit parts from discarded cars.

All other problems can be solved with a very local self-government. Tools are available from garden shops and farm supplies shops. I personally can teach a few hundred people at a time (my voice can carry only that far) how to plant and harvest potatoes. Same potatoes that are bought in the shop can be used for seed. There is no need to wait for anything, farmers would have planted plants previously, what they would need is hundreds of workers to weed/harvest the crops in the absence of combine harvesters. The society can easily survive 6 months on a reduced diet.

sydthebeat

People in cities be fcuked

People in the country be grand

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640273#Comment_120640273

...thank god agri equipment doesnt need power from fossil fuel supplies, including from the national grid!

cj maxx

With solar flares we could become holiday destination for the Northern Lights

Larbre34

We'd certainly be fortunate enough in Ireland that we could feed ourselves manually and gainfully occupy all our able bodied people in that effort, but the simple answer to a scenario like this being posited, is that the strongest and most innovative and most proactive and most resilient would survive and the rest may well be in bother.

jackboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640566#Comment_120640566

All shops would be looted and destroyed in a few days. Food would quickly run out so growing more food would be way too slow.

French Toast

There'd be pandemonium if we suddenly went back to the level of tech we had in the 90's, not to mind a complete wipeout.

TheIrishGrover

If we (globally) had to start from scratch then I think the world would lose 10% of population every 6 weeks. Would lose about 90%of first world population in a year. I don't think we will be all wearing studded leather within a year or Tina Turner would rule the world (RIP Aunty Enity) but I do believe it would be the end of civilisation as we know it. It's not just De Internet. All communication would die. From international to two doors down.

Could ireland become self sufficient? Possibly. But how do we scale up food production? Distribute food? How is it funded? Who grows it? How does an IT manager or HR consultant contribute to that world?

Ironically I believe that poorer, agri-based countries would have the best opportunity to survive.

I think if everything more advanced than a 1950's crystal radio died it would take the world 100 years to even begin to recover. To get to a turning point where things START to recover. After that, another 100 years to get back to 1970's tech buy with a MASSIVELY reduced global population... that is aiming that nuclear power plants just dying melt down within 12 hours.

Fun

TheIrishGrover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640566#Comment_120640566

 most resilient would survive and the rest may well be in bother.

In bother? ..... in a stew most like. Lol

Capt'n Midnight

From 1978 so even back then you'd be up the creek without a paddle until you reinvented the ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcZ_5uCldg

https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e01 The day the universe changed is another good series.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43561172

A really thought-provoking book, basically society would collapse very quickly.

Sleepy

Where and how you live would be the biggest factor in your survival I think. Middle of a tower block in a built up area? You're fucked. On a few acres in the arse end of nowhere? You'll probably be fine.

We live on the coast with fields behind the house so I think we'd survive okay... we have a modest garden, probably about 2 weeks of food in the house (although you'd end up eating fairly odd meals based on what'd spoil fastest), we also have a couple of kayaks and fishing rods so we'd be able to fish, grow some spuds & veg, forage for seaweed, berries etc. (I do that already to make blackberry wine every other autumn) . The house is over a hundred years old so, while I might have to unblock the previously bricked up fireplaces, it'd be easy enough to convert the house back to being liveable without central heating.

It's a thought experiment I like to think about regularly tbh. As per most of the post-apocalyptic fiction (zombie movies etc.), other people would be the greatest threat. I believe that if left to our own devices, we could survive pretty well, even better if the neighbours formed a co-op to bring some of the old land around us back into farming use (it was last farmed over 70 years ago and has been let go wild since).

For those interested in the topic, I'd recommend getting a copy of this (better a physical copy than one on Kindle in this scenario though ;) )

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Knowledge-How-Rebuild-World-Scratch/dp/1847922279

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120639633#Comment_120639633

They won't be "dispersing" here...

"Tis my field" and ill have no jackeen or yank telling me what to do inside these gates, I'll disperse them all right if they come near me🤠

Apiarist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120641034#Comment_120641034

Sure, go ahead and pick those 20 acres of beets by yourself without the machine. Or weed the crops without the Glyphosate sprayer. Or milk 50 cows by hand, twice a day. Or deliver the milk even to the local village without a car. Or sleep at all with sheep being stolen from the hills. The best bet is to get city refugees in and show them how to work.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640281#Comment_120640281

Nope, a horse draw plough is actually horse powered :D

You seen to think the country side is there to provide food for the city .

I'm a technology less world that would not happen

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120641099#Comment_120641099

🤣 rather presumptuous! Fair enough, if that's what you think I'll be waiting.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640254#Comment_120640254

On a small scale with 50 intelligent and level headed people and an empty town it would work.

On an actual scale where 1000 half starved and scared people descend onto every garden shop to fight over the 10 of every tool they have in stock at any one time? Not a chance.

Every animal would be slaughtered in a fortnight, the countryside would be stripped bare in a month and people would be starving to death within two months. No doubt.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

There was a TV series about this made about 10-15 years on this premist called Revolution. Got cancelled after two or three seasons.

Count Dracula

It would be a short term problem, but i don't think it would be a cataclysmic event. It could well capitulate to global panic and cause major disruption. But I think we would be up and running again fairly sharpish.

The irony about your examples of solar flares, is the ever growing populace behind the very obvious theory that global warming is in fact a direct result of solar flare activity... which is in fact the real culprit behind our environmental problems and is the main reason our Ozone layer has been decreasing? It makes an awful lot of sense and casts an eerie shadow on people idolising the Aurora Borealis every year?

That kryptonite glow from the north, is actually a message from the Arctic Gods, telling us that we have been wasting our time and energy, human shaming ( or bovine shaming ) our environmental predicament.... when in fact it is really an intergalactic problem that humans have no possibility of resolving.

Far more likely. Don't forget, you mortals are the same human race that once thought the world was flat, incarcerated Galileo for stating the sun was the centre of the solar system, thought that World War 1 was a good idea and still cannot explain what the vermiform appendix is actually for.

65535

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058297821/what-if-all-technology-was-wiped-out

Solar flares (CME - Coronal Mass Ejections) hit the earth all the time - Ham radio ops and others are very aware of them now - apparently when the moon landing was happening they were not able to forcast them and one missed them.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640273#Comment_120640273

Ha ha I wish. Be interesting to see how people would last around here with no car, spar and the chipper/chinese closed.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640273#Comment_120640273

People in cities be getting out of the city pretty fast.

893bet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120639633#Comment_120639633

Disperse from Dublin? And live where exactly?

I think this is fascinating topic. I am watching the walking dead from the start at the moment. On season 6 (I stopped watching at season 8 a few years back). But that scavenging would be thr norm…..within a week…..a week…….most peopes houses have less than a weeks dry food……no phone to call the police……and within a week no salary being paid, no value to money etc so no police there to anaswer the phone…..

Question for the tech folk. Would all the new PV panels works with out a power in supply as it stands?

Reminds me to go purchase a few boxes of shotgun cartridges.

notAMember

Do NONE of you know how to light a fire and bbq a few veggies.

No electronics is just a long camping trip. Supply chains would adjust. Ireland is absolutely flooded with food, it exports loads.

Hospitals are probably where things would suffer, but honestly, if there's enough bleach, you can muddle through plenty of treatments with a knife.

You're not going to die if your phone stops working. Christ.

taxAHcruel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120639639#Comment_120639639

Cool :) We have avoided the screens so far. So it has not yet been a problem. Though they are not yet teens.

But it is not the screens themselves that would bother me. I have nothing particularly against them. It is the idea that while using them they might rudely ignore someone talking to them or not answer. That I would take issue with and address very swiftly and view it as a good parenting issue. But I would say the same about television, books, and many other things too. So I wouldn't want to seem like I am singling out screen use as some particular devil.

As for how we got through the teen years without being so interconnected I strangely remember it being the opposite. We were very disconnected. I remember groups of teens walking around "together" but actually each on their own individual Sony Walkman playing loud.

jackboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120641607#Comment_120641607

The food would not last as long as you think. All the shops would be looted within a few days. Then it will be down to neighbours to fight it out over those scraps. It would be too late for most to plant food and any existing crops would be quickly raided.

Hospitals would be shut down in a few days as staff would all immediately leave to go fight in the streets over food.

City people would head for the countryside but all remaining scraps of food would be well hidden at that stage so they would be just walking to their deaths.